Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/455

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  • forms him into the soul-bird, the unfulfilled wish. Picus

was also understood as the wood demon and incubus, as well as the soothsayer, all of which fully indicate the mother libido.[55] Picus was often placed on a par with Picumnus by the ancients. Picumnus is the inseparable companion of Pilumnus, and both are actually called infantium dii, "the gods of little children." Especially it was said of Pilumnus that he defended new-born children against the destroying attacks of the wood demon, Silvanus. (Good and bad mother, the motive of the two mothers.)

The benevolent bird, a wish thought of deliverance which arises from introversion,[56] advises the hero to shoot the magician under the hair, which is the only vulnerable spot. This spot is the "phallic" point,[57] if one may venture to say so; it is at the top of the head, at the place where the mystic birth from the head takes place, which even today appears in children's sexual theories. Into that Hiawatha shoots (one may say, very naturally) three arrows[58] (the well-known phallic symbol), and thus kills Megissogwon. Thereupon he steals the magic wampum armor, which renders him invulnerable (means of immortality). He significantly leaves the dead lying in the water—because the magician is the fearful mother:

"On the shore he left the body,
Half on land and half in water,
In the sand his feet were buried,
And his face was in the water."

Thus the situation is the same as with the fish king, because the monster is the personification of the water